College athletes don’t need to unionize. They don’t need to become “employees” of their schools, any more than professors need to be on scholarship. If athletes feel used, they need to return the favor, by taking advantage of every opportunity afforded them by the greedy folks who run the schools, and by the sports-mad society in which we live.

An NLRB office in Chicago has decided Northwestern University football players can unionize. They can vote on it. If they vote yea, then what?

Northwestern said it would appeal. And away we go.

There is no entirely right answer here. Is the NCAA right to cut billion-dollar TV deals and not pay the entertainers? No one can argue logically that it is. Should the NCAA allow athletes to earn money from sales of their likenesses and names? It should. But really, how many college athletes would benefit from that concession?

If you’re Johnny Manziel of the previous two years, you’re happy about that. If you’re Johnny Benchwarmer, you couldn’t care less.

Should schools be responsible for medical costs incurred while a player is playing? Yep, and most do. Every student has to have health insurance to enroll. If an athlete’s personal coverage is lacking, the university generally makes up the difference. What universities don’t do is extend the coverage beyond an athlete’s time on campus. That’s not great for concussed football players, and any who suffer debilitating injuries.

Some would say the most important person on any quasi-am football team is the trainer.

Beyond that, what is the point of unionizing?

Taken to an extreme, what if players everywhere join a union? Colleges recognize them as employees. Can they still be students? Why couldn’t colleges say, “OK, we’ll pay you. But the free education is out.”

That would seem logical. And tragic.

It costs Northwestern $61,000 a year to pay for a full-ride football player, $76,000 if he attends summer school. Given that the median household income in the U.S. in 2012 was just over $55,000, according to the Census Bureau, that’s a fine chunk of free school.

With that, the player receives tuition, room, board, first-class hotels on the road, occasional charter airplane flights, free tutoring, mass exposure in the community and nationally.

Imagine as an undergrad, being able to audition for a job in front of 80,000 people on Saturdays, and millions more on TV.

Imagine, too, graduating debt-free. That serving job you had for spending money, or more? That midnight-to-8 shift you worked at Kroger, stocking shelves? Quit ’em. Everything is paid for.

It’s hard to get on board with unionizing. But every time greedy athletic departments and weak university presidents sell out their athletes by moving to a different conference, it gets a little easier. If you are, say, West Virginia University, how do you square a “student-athlete’s needs” with joining the Big 12, and making those kids fly halfway across the country and back multiple times a year?

What’s it like for a basketball player to play a game on a Tuesday night in Manhattan, Kan.? Leave Morgantown Monday. Play Tuesday, get on the plane after the game, fly half the night, arrive on campus at 3 a.m. And oh, yeah, don’t miss that 8 o’clock class Wednesday.

“There needs to be a happy medium,” Byron Larkin said.

I talked to Larkin on Friday, because he epitomizes the school-jock deal. Xavier used him for four years to gain a higher profile. Larkin used the school right back. He became the Musketeers’ all-time leading scorer, sure. But he also got a degree in marketing, and followed that with a master’s in business. Now, he runs his own financial planning firm.

“I always used basketball to improve my life,” Larkin said, even as he believed he would play in the NBA. “When I didn’t make it in the NBA, I just said, ‘OK, I’ll do something else.’ ”

Not every athlete is so level-headed, or comes from the nurturing background Larkin enjoyed. “I had parents who instilled values in me,” he said.

Larkin was lucky and unusual in that respect. But every player does have the same chance at a free education. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, to make a better life. How each chooses to use it is up to him. A union won’t help him with that. ⬛